and if she makes it her choice, she has the right to kill her pre-born child? Very well.... And if another woman can make it her choice, she has every right to kill you. — LostThomist

But that's not how the Law works, nor how rights are granted! Your outlook on rights is completely dystopian!

Your claim that personhood begins at birth is no more arbitrary than me claiming that persohood begins at 18 years old. — LostThomist

And what is wrong with this arbitrariness? Just look at the word itself! Of course the Law is 'arbitrary'. How else could it be? Personhood is, once a legal term, after all!

No more than an infant being potentially an adult or a 16 year old kid being a potential adult — LostThomist

A 16 years-old is fully "alive and viable" in the eyes of the Law.

All the more for why the parents should get to choose. They've invested so much in those children it's only fair they have the choice of killing them if they want. — René Descartes

Perhaps you remember Marguerite Duras? Her piece on the Affaire Gregory, "Sublime, forcément sublime Christiane V" , where she seriously (although, didn't do much of a good job) defended the right of a mother to murder her child. "Who are you to tell someone who gave life that she can't take that life back?" or some such insanities.

She was publicly destroyed as a result. All of a sudden it became acceptable to call Duras absolutely monstrous things in the european press.

Is it a good rule to have debt hanging over children aged 15-18 for stupid mistakes? — Benkei

The aim of the civil court system is for damages to get paid, when damages are real. If a 15-18 causes 250 000$ of damages to a landlord, it is not a valid reason for the landlord to have to eat up any of that 250 000$ in damages himself, that it was caused by someone who is only 15-18.

I don't know... Firing squad is probably effective, and it's traditional, to boot. So many cartoons feature a firing squad. The last person executed by Firing Squad in Utah was in 2010.

Hanging has a fairly long history of being kind of botchy -- heads ripping off, rope giving way, trap door not opening properly, person not dropping far enough to die quickly, etc. Gas isn't quick enough, and electrocution goes haywire sometimes too. — Bitter Crank

Semi-related trivia factoid time!

The spark that lit the fires of the Red River Rebellion, one of the three major rebellious efforts against the British rule of Canada, was the (supposedly botched) execution of Thomas Scott, an Orangist adventurer, by the Métis government of Louis Riel. Scott was a horrible individual who had burned a couple of Métis houses down and, during the lenght of his trial, kept hurling racist insults and death threats at the judge and higher officials of the Métis Provisionnal Government...

There is one report on the execution which says that the firing squad shot once Scott and missed every major organs. They reloaded and shot him again, hitting him once in the chest but not killing him. Then, Riel's general walked up to him and shot him in the face, but apparently only managed to blow away his jaw. They then buried him alive.

Its likely that report is entirely false, tho, and was only cooked up to rile up the anglo-canadian population against the Métis while at the same time showcasing the Métis as idiots that wouldn't really put up a fight.

But that has nothing to do with a child's liability or a child being held responsible for anything. — Hanover

Never said it did. You brought that into question. Rationality is not the basis of why we get to vote as of 18, or why we are considered adults. We are all (hopefully) rational a good decade before that.

The parents are being held liable for the acts of their child, which clearly indicates under the law that the child has limited duties to the public and is being considered a ward of his parents. — Hanover

It's also a bit more than that. If the child had been found rational, then the damages can be imposed on the parents until the child is of age, and then they can sue their child to get the damages reimbursed and the debt transfered. If the child was not rational, but the parents did not act diligently, they will be stuck with the damages forever.

Regardless, I don't see where anything you've said of Canadian law affects our discussion here. — Hanover

Well, for starters, the discussion relates to a U.K law. As such, the Common Law basis is identical in both jurisdictions, and for the longest time, the highest instances were the same (the Chamber of Lords). Technically, the opinion of a georgian lawyer would be as if not more otiose than that of a canadian one.

Appeal to authority. That is a logical fallacy. — LostThomist

That isn't an appeal of authority, it's the correction of a category mistake. "Murder" is a legal term. It defines "unlawful killing". Tautologically, abortion isn't murder, because it is not unlawful.

Of course that's a very trite argument. Obviously Thorongil refered to a moral acceptation of the terms "murder", and not the legal one.

I've no idea how a recognition of rationality would result in a minor being treated like he was the age of majority. — Hanover

Being rational in the eyes of the court has nothing to do with being an adult or voting legally.

In french-canadian Civil court, determining if a child is rational or not is important because if the child causes damages, is rational (so he could understand an instruction as to not cause damages) and it's demonstrated that the parents failed to instruct the child properly, they could be held entirely responsible for the damages, even if they otherwise acted diligently.

If the child is not rational, the court must otherwise determine if the damage was caused by the child through a lack of care of the parent. There is no point in asking a child if his parents told him not to play with matches when its evident to everyone that the child could not understand what an instruction is anyway.

That's what rationality is in the eyes of the court here, and again the origin of the 7 years old as 'the age of reason'. Nothing to do with being an adult or voting.

Even though I am not nearly as widely beloved as Taylor Smith or Beyoncé Noakes, I expect there would be enough people that would be quite upset about it that you would decide that the morally preferable path is to not stab me. — andrewk

That is a false dichotomy right there. I would much rather hear that someone stabbed Beyoncé in her coma than hear someone did the same to you.

See, I too can do good philosophy! :wink:

With all due respect.....that is not really responding philosophically or academically, but rather using a bizarre standard for writing on a website that is all about philosophy (which often requires lengthy definitions and explanations) — LostThomist

You can cut down the pedant's speech. Philosophy doesn't require that we speak through a chicken's anus (now I doubt this idiom is going to translate). And it's traditional to introduce oneself before launching into an endless moralizing tirade. That was all I meant to convey.

"Read other works of the philosophers"...? Are you often this condescending.

First TPF post is a textwall against abortion.

That's a paddling.

That's simply not true as a matter of scientific fact. — Dachshund

Yeah, but what is the point of that argument in the context of this thread? Voting is not problem-solving. You can have a 180 I.Q. genius vote for a moron because the moron's wife is hot. Or because you think the moron would be cool to have a BBQ with.

No, the problem of emergence of a unique consciousness is different from example you gave. — bahman

No, it's essentially the same. See, I too I'm allowed to disagree without arguments, and it doesn't move the conversation along anymore than you! Yeah! :confused:

Of course urban traffic is a function of number of cars and structure of road. — bahman

The structure of a city isn't planned ahead in block, contrary to what peeps in Urban Dev might tell you. Modern cities have evolved from multiple neighbourhoods merging together, each with their own initial planning (or lack of planning), driving bylaws and specifications due to the make-up of the area. Traffic is an emerging feature from the interrelations of the properties of each of those categories.

This is what we call low-quality posting.

Are you the oppressed or the oppressor Akanthinos — René Descartes

We prefer a dynamic relationship, so it depends on who spoke their safeword last. :halo:

A tad off-topic, tho. :wink:

Isn't it mental capacity that distinguishes the child from the adult and therefore limits the child's right to vote? — Hanover

nah, children are considered "rational" "legally" from the moment they can be expected to understand that bad = no and good = yes, and that "x is bad is an instruction to be followed, basically. Before, the standard was 7 years old, which is where the "age of reason" expression comes from. Nowadays this is much lower than this, and 4-5 years old can be found "rational" in the eyes of the court.

I certainly expected someone like you to find Borat funny. :vomit:

More like an autopoÏetic structure, that creates and maintains a boundary against an appreciation for modern and postmodern (and soon hypermodern) intellectual enterprises.

The thing is, I don't think fundamentalism is the only basis for such a dynamic to emerge. Misplaced patriotism, a too exclusive concept of national identity, hell, even what Peterson does, by framing his enemy as neo-marxist postmodernism, these are all conducive to the developpment of a form of anti-intellectualism.

I cannot understand why such persons should be granted the right to vote. What possible arguments could there be for extending suffrage to adults who lack a normal capacity for rational thought? — Dachshund

You might want to dig deeper into your own laws before assuming that it is so simple. s73 of the Electoral Administrative Act 2006 simply abolishes an 18th century legal distinction for 'lunatics' and renders the claim of mental incapacity impotent in regards to voting capacity. Additionnally, the notes for s73 states that it makes important changes to the 1983 Commission on Mental Incapacity document, the preceding legal omnium on the matter, not that it completely invalidates it. Meaning some of its provisions in regards to legal capacity unrelated to mental acuity (like the ones in regards to the im/possibility of communication) will likely still stands. Otherwise the notes would simply mention that the 1983 document had been entirely invalidated. I'll go this far, but the 1983 Commission document is 300 pages long, and you ain't paying me for this. :joke:

BTW, someone who has no rational capacity whatsoever will almost assuredly be under full legal curatorship. Meaning he still won't get to vote.

Anyway, you have not addressed Peterson's point regarding 'taking responsibility' (or 'growing up'). Which means, that if you have any moral responsibility at all, it is to improve yourself (whatever that may mean) and take charge of your own life and its direct surroundings -- hence his remark of 'cleaning thy room'. It is basically Aristotelian Viritue ethics in modern clothes. — Youseeff

And yet you accuse others of speaking platitudes. :vomit:

The question is how a unified subjective experience is possible when each part experience different thing. You are not providing an answer to that. — bahman

That question is essentially like wondering why is it that an entire car is capable of movement when that movement is entirely born out of motion of its parts. It is not terribly relevant philosophically. In General System terms, it marks the difference between an output of a part of the system, and an output of the system itself, that is all.

Can you give me an example, except than consciousness, of a property of a system that is not function of properties of system's parts? — bahman

Urban traffic, movements in flock of birds, hell, even hashtags and retweets.

For what regards consciousness which is a side topic one can argue that it is impossible to measure it. — bahman

The smallest measurement possible is a token of presence : if you can't measure something, you either haven't defined it well enough for measurement, or there is nothing at all there to measure.

We were discussion whether electron for example is conscious. He answered yes. Then I question how a unique consciousness is possible when all parts of your body are conscious separately? — bahman

Then my answer still holds, despite not being about electrons. A unique consciousness is possible through the passive synthesis of our inputs, when it is acheived. If it is not, and perhaps it is the normal state of affairs for certain living beings, then you truly have multiple consciousness related to different body parts in a single organism. There is nothing a priori wrong with this, and there is no deep philosophical connection to make with this, except perhaps in regards to the fact that, seemingly, most living beings do unify their experiential data into a single "stream of consciousness".

Well, this thread was about emergence. I argue that it is impossible. — bahman

I've already shown you why your, let's say, your meriology doesn't represent O'Connors type of causal asynchronous emergence, but it doesn't represent the standard supervenience account of emergence either.

In your account, all properties are defined en bloc, at once, with no regards to dynamic relations. In the standard supervenience account, it becomes necessary to define further subsets of Pi, where each of those subsets may also be attributed properties. The relational properties of those subsets are seen, by virtue of their structural peculiarity, as equally primitive as those properties we generally would define as primitives. Since the effects described are not technically the result of causal relationships, but of relationships betweens sets of causally entangled properties, they are additionnally often not described as 'causal' events, but rather as 'synchronous' events.

How a unique consciousness could arises from parts motions and configurations? We don't observe separate consciousness related to separate parts. — bahman

Because each parts are vested in the same context, from the same point of view, that of a singular organism.

The problem of passive synthesis is solved through a proper analysis of the multitude of "selves" generated by a living organism, and even more dramatically by a mature human being. We don't "observe separate consciousness related to separate parts" because we are normally functionning living beings that relate directly to their sense-data through a unification of those different inputs on a singular field. This could and sometime is different. Alien Hand Syndrome is a thing, you know.
We also don't have a tendency to question the unity of our consciousness because we all have an autobiographical and historical selves which remain more or less the same in-between our daily losses of consciousness. Everytime I wake up I could start by questionning who I am, if I'm not a new being that just started existing. But then I would each time remember that I am myself, that I have my particular history, and that as far as I can tell, that history is just about the same one as the one I would have come up with yesterday, and would come up with tomorrow. That, although it is not an exercise we actually need to consciously perform, unifies my experiences and consciousness just as much as the peculiarity that is passive synthesis.

I think thats the correct usage of the word. Yes? No? — T Clark

Emergence is not an easy thing to define, and how you define it is half the problem itself, so the idea of a correct usage is already deleterious. Emergence can be presented as an acausal synchronic supervenience of properties, or it can be presented as a dynamical nonsynchronic causal relata, like Timothy O'Connor does. And in dozens of other ways. I would agree that standard supervenience emergentism is wrong, at least because it does not properly explain how these relata could be primitives.

This, however, is completely beyond scope of Bahman's OP, which is trivially dismissed because of its profound inadequacy.

That simply mean that science cannot explain consciousness. — bahman

I don't see where you read that. That simply means that some properties will appear as emergent as long as we have not found the proper scientific paradigm to make them fit. Re consciousness, that again simply means that, if consciousness appears to be an emergent property, then it is because we have no scientific paradigm ready to explain away those properties. Or perhaps that the properties we ask to explain away themselves no longer fit the scientific paradigm we use to explain away everything else.

Ex, if you expect an explanation of consciousness to consist mostly in terms of biology, then you probably won't ever agree to an explanation which consists almost exclusively in cognitive terms. If you expect the explanation to consists mostly in cognitive terms, but we present you an explanation of consciousness in terms of general system organisation, then you probably won't ever agree to it. People who claim that "science" cannot explain consciousness a) always bring in their own unjustified expectations of what consciousness is and what its explanation should look like, and b) almost always assume that it is not perfectly normal that we have no current complete explanation of consciousness.

I understand what he is trying to say but what I am arguing is that any macro-property is reducible to a set of micro-properties. What he is saying is that macro-properties are independent. — bahman

No, he semi-correlates the possibility to render a set of properties meaningful at a level of explanation with the specificities of those levels. An emergent property is emergent more because it simply could not be made sense of in the previous paradigm of explanation, as such, invisible in that paradigm, than because it is magically supervening over other properties.

An inspiring sight!

Judith's expression is just too dumb on this one. "Wait, why is he screaming, and why is there all this red stuff coming out?". Like a debutante on a skin-flick set facing her first moneyshot.

Funnily enough, I much prefer "Judith beheading Holofernes" to Barrack's portrait.

a system made of "n" particles in which particle "i" has a set of properties Pi={Pi1,..., Pim}, where "m" is number of properties of a particle and Pjk is the property "k" of particle "j". Any measurable property of the system is only a function of {P1,...,PM}. — bahman

There is a hierarchy of levels of properties L0, L1, …, Ln, … of which at least one distinct level is associated with the subject matter of each special science, and Lj cannot be reduced to Li, for any i < j.

-Paul Humphreys, cited from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/

I could use more knowledge on just how POMO did come about. — Bitter Crank

Jean Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition (1979) is the 1st text using the term, but Pomo will ark backwards to Nietzsche, Heidegger and Lacan. French Pomo's side, the poststructuralists, became especially ensensed after 1968's student riots in Paris, and also added Marx to the pantheon.

Lyotard's text is fairly amenable. “I define postmodern as incredulity toward meta-narratives,” (Lyotard 1984 [1979], xxiv)

Regardless, what the right-wing fears isn't Marxism per say, but a sort of Stalinist/Maoist state-lead economic militarization, as Peterson suggests in the video, and the idea that this is feasible threat within America is eye-rollingly laughable. — Maw

The idea itself is but a red-herring. Its object is to legitimize the Right again against a myriad of progressive issues. Funnily enough, and contra their polarizing titles, there is not necessarily that much left that does not divides only artificially the american Left and Right. Nothing that you could lay at the feet of the original Liberal - Conservative ideological war. There is thus the need to legitimize the apparently conservative effort against - what? New pronouns? Trans People going to some bathroom over the other? Feminism? Jesus. Peterson and his ilk sure didn't stop to think for a second that little defines a person's character as much as who they decide to fight...

The War of Ideas. It has such a nice ring to it. But which fucking War of Ideas??? There's been no such real War, no struggle on the political intellectual plane in the last 30 years. POMO is insanely fringe. Depending on the Uni you are in, you can do any form of studies without ever having to encounter it. The idea that Litterature departments have somehow managed to infect the Western world with acute marxism would be funny if it was not shared by so many. Now it is just sad.

In 2010, who would have thought that a self-labelled socialist could run for president in the US? — StreetlightX

In an election filled to the brim with weird and unexplainable phenomenon, that might have been the weirdest.

Where does it stop? — charleton

When people stop asking for sovereignty?

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, everyone took a stand against them. — René Descartes

Well, there was a specific effort from Western powers to vilify as much as they could Saddam's troops. Not that they needed much help, but I remember horrible stories of soldiers throwing grenades in hospital nurseries that were all debunked quickly afterwards.

Strangely, that only started to happen as soon as he declared his intention to run for president. — gurugeorge

That's one hell of a selective memory you have there. People have been calling the guy for what he is for decades. :-}

The real advertising scoop for Christianity was the big emphasis on forgiveness. Now you can do whatever the hell you like in life as long as you get in a quick apology before death you'll be fine. — Pseudonym

Well, I was always taught absolution in Ultime Onction could only be given if the person was truly earnest in his repentance. But then again, it's not like the Church never sold any pardon. :(

Couldn't we just abandon the idea of internal consistence, like Tarski did, and then keep on doing logic in whatever other meta-language provides external consistency to maths? :-|

All I said was that it is one institution (among a number of others), that allows child abusers access to victims and a means to cover-up their behaviour. The fewer such institutions we have the safer our children will be. — Pseudonym

Well, the problem could be solved in multiple manners. The Church could be much much better at policing its own members and prosecuting them. There could be advisory standards in place so that priests never have much one-on-one time with children, if at all. Given that we are to trust, for the most part, total strangers on the basis of cloth and position alone, that would not be too much to ask.

I, perhaps, was lucky, but I was raised in a fairly conservative Catholic environment. Boarding private unisex schools, uniforms and all, and I yet I was never once alone with a priest more than, what, 5 minutes? Everywhere there was a mean-looking Sister or Mother watching us like we were vermin, and she was the eagle. So, as such, there is already a semblance of those standards in place.

On the other hand, this is not to say that there could not have been cases of such abuse in my vicinity. The spread of this vileness is always horrifyingly disconcerting.

I think the fact that a group supposedly professing knowledge of the divine manage to restrain themselves from abusing children to no greater degree than any other group shows absolutely clearly how utterly useless religion is at instilling moral values. — Pseudonym

Well, that is the moral problem of Christian religions : for all their claims about morality, the overall moral content of the Bible, once analysed, is, at least to me, relatively trivial. Its only a solid foundation if you give in to the reality of divine punishment, and I think that's not really as widespread amongst Christians as they claim it is.

Who cares about proportionality if one can get results by making accusations which are likely to result in a firing or costly resignation? It's an all women for every woman free for all. — Bitter Crank

Last I saw, the determining factor in winning cases of sexual harassment in the workplace was who made the first complaint, regardless of what happened. Not gender. Then again, things could have changed since then...